NYC Streets

Bayard West Farm Grid

This is the street grid that now covers the area between Broadway and Sixth Avenue from Canal Street north to West 3rd Street. The Bayards were the descendents of Peter Stuyvesant's sister Anna. In the mid-18th Century the Bayard farm extended for about a half mile along the Bowery, tapering westward to a point near the present Sixth Avenue and Prince Street. A 1754 map shows a few streets laid out on the Bayard land closest to the Bowery. These are the present Elizabeth, Mott and Mulberry Streets; and the corresponding parts of the cross streets from Bayard Street (1) north to Broome Street. After the Revolutionary War, Broadway was extended north of Canal Street, thereby opening the westerly part of the Bayard farm to development. Their property west of Broadway was laid out into streets and lots by 1788, and these streets were later extended through neighboring farms. In the 1790s the north-south streets of the Bayard West Grid were numbered, starting with what is now Mercer Street and continuing west to the now-vanished Hancock Street, which was called Tenth Street. This numbering system was abandoned by 1803. See Numbered Streets.

The Mangin-Goerck Plan of 1803 envisioned a major expansion of the Bayard West Farm Grid. It showed the streets from Mercer through Sullivan Streets continuing northward until they ran into the westward-trending Bowery. All but one of these streets now end at West 8th Street. The exception is the extension of Wooster Street, which is now University Place. The east-west streets in this extended grid were, from south to north: Amity, Science, Art, Robert, Randall, Point, Poplar, and Cornelius. Amity and Art Streets already existed at the time. The others were never built.